Episode Thirteen: Coronavirus – Don’t Feed The Fear
Shownotes:
Asian Teens Are Addressing Coronavirus Racism On TikTok
As Coronavirus Spreads, So Does Anti-Chinese Sentiments
‘Made in China’: how Wuhan coronavirus spread anti-Chinese racism like a disease through Asia
With thanks to High School Principal Nick Alchin for his input into this episode.
thanks for sharing your wise thoughts. well done
Very insightful thoughts. Thank you for sharing with our community. I hope mentor take the time to share with their classes. Some very important lessons in here.
Psychology class discussion has helped up look at this issue from another point of view. Although we see some out-group discrimination, personally I believe Nick Alchin’s opinion of fear more than anything being the case. In Singapore specifically where many are Chinese, xenophobia against Chinese might not be the issue but rather a fear of the disease that is misguided.
From learning about stereotypes in Psychology, the use of a schema can lead to the perpetuating of coronavirus fear. Schemas act as heuristics which aid us in daily life, making tasks seem easier – but therefore becomes easily subject to bias and mistakes. It is possible that from a cognitive perspective that schemas are created about the virus, with the brain making the association with all Asian people having the virus (illusory correlation). Thank you for the insight podcast episode
Based on class discussion and from a psychological perspective the language surrounding the virus (e.g it specifically originally being called ‘the Wuhan Virus’ ) has directly targeted the people of Wuhan in turn creating Schemas that have result in these extreme stereotypes, as outside individuals attach these negative stereotypical schemas to everyone in the Wuhan province believing they all carry the virus.
The language used around the virus triggers stereotypes and discrimination as it is usually referred to as the “Wuhan” virus. However, the information processing is to a large extent automatic and often not conscious.
From the discussion in our psychology class, we’ve been able to draw some connections between cognitive processes in psychology and how that stimulates the formation of stereotypes and prejudice. There is a theory called Schema in which humans form shortcuts when they are presented with a vast amount of information in order to easily comprehend the world around them. This might be one of the reasons why the stereotype of seeing the Asian community as the primary carrier of the Corona Virus is present right now.
From a psychology perspective, a key point that came up was that through a cognitive approach we have automatic unconscious shortcuts called schema. They are an energy-saving device that causes us to easily and quickly develop thoughts about a topic. Given that this Virus came from Wu Han in China a lot of people associate those 2 areas together. Therefore could be why was are so quick to judge and show prejudice and hostility towards Chinese people.
This is interesting as we’ve been studying etiologies to understand xenophobia. From a biological etiolgy, it makes sense discrimation is increasing exponentially as the biological approach argues how we like to protect our pool of genetic makeup, which means protecting “us” and our community. This is linked to oxytocin, which alters the level of trust, and hence the way we view Chinese(being easy to blame as per the geographical location of Wuhan) means they become an outgroup and leads to discrimination.
There’s a biological explanation for the development of ingroup favouritism and outgroup discrimination that provides some form of arguments to why regions and cities within China could hold stereotypes and prejudice agains’t Wuhan despite sharing a large social identity as people and regions of mainland china.Oxytocin as a hormone is known to play a role in the formation of trust and prosocial behavior amongst immediate ingroups , which in face of a threat like the corona virus could possibly lead to sub -outgroup discrimination by Chinese against people from Wuhan despite the fact that they (people of Wuhan are Chinese as well). Nonetheless this biological explanation is provocative and shouldn’t be seen as a solid argument for this topic , there are other cognitive and sociocultural factors that may play role here as well.
There are so many important take-aways that connect to what we’re currently studying in IB Psychology. We approach prejudice & discrimination from the lens of biology, cognition and sociocultural factors.
The following article details some of the research that highlights the role of hormones in group serving behaviour: “When you give preferential treatment to your in-group as ethnocentrism, you implicitly indirectly discriminate against people who do not belong to your in-group. And they feel that, they feel resentment, they may protest, so indirectly, it could be that oxytocin contributes to inter-group tensions” De Dreu
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/jan/30/bright-ideas-oxytocin-hormone-racism
The level of analysis in this episode is really impressive. I’ve shared this with the high school leadership team at Dover too.
Thank you so much for getting our podcast into the community at Dover!